The stitched assembly disclosed herein can be obtained through the use of applicant's patent entitled: "SEWING MACHINE" bearing U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,449 and issued Oct. 30, 1984. In this patent, there is embodied a modified sewing machine capable of performing in one operation the two heretofore separate procedures which were as follows:
(1) gathering the waist of a skirt, sleeve or the like; first fabric and retaining the gathered condition by a first line of stitching; and
(2) stitching the first fabric to a second fabric, such as a corsage and also to an elastic or non-elastic strip, which is applied directly to the first-gathered fabric.
When the strip is elastic, it can be sewn to the two fabrics under any suitable tension.
Briefly summarized the sewing machine of my U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,449 comprises a sewing machine provided with first differential second feed dogs adapted to catch and gather the first fabric and feed both fabric past the sewing needle. A guide device projecting angularly above the throat plate of the machine ensures that the second fabric will be fed steadily overlyingly the first fabric without being gathered by the front feed dogs. The throat plate is formed with a longitudinal forward groove adapted to guide the strip below the fabric being gathered. This guiding groove has no feed dogs to ensure that the strip is not in contact with gathering dogs. Therefore, the strip is not gathered itself while being stitched in the simultaneous operation.
It is known to stitch two pieces of fabric together, one gathered and the other straight or ungathered, with an elastic strip stitched to the two pieces of fabric. The disadvantage of such sewing resides in the fact that two separate operations have till now been necessary in order that the resulting stitched assembly complies with the aesthetic requirements of the trade. For instance, to sew the gathered top edge of a skirt to the ungathered lower edge of a corsage together with an elastic strip at the junction of the two pieces of fabric, the elastic strip must overlie the gathered fabric and not the ungathered fabric, otherwise the elastic strip would cause an unaesthetic and totally-unacceptable bulge in the corsage. The known manner is therefore first to gather and sew the top edge of the skirt in a first sewing operation and then sew the corsage and strip to the gathered skirt in a second sewing operation with the gathered skirt on top of the corsage and the elastic strip on top of the skirt. With this known manner, it is also very difficult to match the pattern of the two pieces of fabric. Moreover, since such separate operations are time-consuming and costly, it would be very desirable to have a stitched assembly in which the strip, the gathered fabric and the ungathered fabric are stitched together by a single line of stitching, with the strip directly applied to the gathered fabric.